TDI Diver News recently posted an article discussing in-water recompression, titled, "
Remote Dive Site Decompression Illness - How to Save a Diver's Life." A few people have been asking some important questions about why Open Water scuba courses simply state that it's never an option. I'd like to offer my perspective.
What can go wrong?
- If a diver is showing signs of a decompression illness (DCI) hit, what's to say they won't get worse in the water?
- Paralysis complicates things tremendously and makes the diver uncontrolled; and it significantly increases the difficulty of evacuating the injured diver from the water.
- Passing out, convulsing, or toxing out in the water can quickly turn it into a drowning situation.
- Compound emergencies are extremely challenging to mitigate
Why don't they teach it in an Open Water scuba class?
- There is a frigging TON of information to learn in a basic Open Water class in addition to the in-water skills. It's just too complicated to include. It's safer on a whole to just say it's off limits.
- At the open water level, divers don't have the training to manage necessary equipment to support in-water decompression
- How about working on your form and buoyancy before worrying about performing emergency medical procedures
- Delaying access to proper medical care (even in remote locations) places a huge burden of liability on others around you
- If you're spending that much money to haul yourself and your gear to such a remote location then you should have already invested in an oxygen administration course ($25-100 tops) and purchased the necessary gear (suitable O2 kit) to mitigate such a situation. Even an extra AL80 with a 100% O2 fill is under $200
- Divers Alert Network is a better resource to rely on than this for >99% of open water divers
Additional points:
- If this were skiing/snowboarding, this is the equivalent to learning how to ride the ski lift, and immediately trying to pull huge airs and flips off of monster jumps at 40+ mph. You're gonna kill yourself. One thing at a time.
- If that type of diving sounds interesting to you (and it should - it's frigging awesome and learning as much as possible should always be the goal of scuba diving) then start taking advanced classes, tec courses, rescue diving courses, first aid/O2 admin courses, deco courses, etc. It's just not a basic topic.
